[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15862]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  Reverend Arne Panula, Catholic Information Center, Washington, D.C., 
offered the following prayer:
  Heavenly Father, Lord of life and death, in this season, as days grow 
dark and cold, as leaves fall in the sad autumn twilight, so we recall 
that souls fall each day into eternity, and that one day the falling 
leaf will be ours.
  ``For here we have no lasting city, but . . . seek the one which is 
to come.'' The true measure of the present is life's end: what excites 
or exasperates in the moment diminishes in eternity.
  And, conversely, these things that seem minute in the present--an act 
of kindness, a smile, a heartfelt prayer, a small sacrifice--are the 
grains of sand that accumulate and toward eternity become a mountain, a 
monument of grace.
  Help us, Heavenly Father, never to lose sight of life's end, never to 
overlook those grains of sand but, rather, collect them for eternity's 
hour.
  Amen.

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